Last Updated: 10:18 am | Saturday, August 1, 2009

The Cincinnati Enquirer 

 GREEN TOWNSHIP - Susan and Doug Hayes knew they had a problem with bees.

As far back as 2007 the parents of four saw a swarm of bees flying around the third story of their Green Township home. They made informal enquiries about removal, but the bees didn't bother them and they didn't bother the bees.

So, the bees stayed with the hope a harsh winter would kill them off.

Then their 7-year-old son was stung last Monday - by what turns out wasn't even one of "their" bees.

Still, it led the family to seek help removing the bees and to the jaw-dropping discovery that ten of thousands - possibly up to 70,000 - honey bees were living in the walls of their home.

"I love nature, bees are important to our ecosystem" Susan Hayes said. "It breaks my heart that I destroyed their home, but they were destroying mine."

Bill Jones, a beekeeper and owner of Loveland Honey, put her mind at ease.

The bees were honeybees and thus endangered. No killing allowed, Jones told the couple.

"The queen and the comb was everywhere," he said. "If anything was open they filled it."

Jones wasn't daunted by the scope of the job, even though it meant pulling off part of the roof.

Jones sucked them up with a bee-vac, a vacuum-like machine that sucks the bees into a box, outfitted with a cushion so the bees don't get hurt.

"It's not the biggest job we've ever done," said Jones, who has been in the bee business for the last four years. "But, it is the most intense, because they went behind the chimney."

The biggest job, at an apartment complex in Springboro just a couple of weeks ago, had about 80,000 bees, he said.

Jones and his crew took out 22 pounds of honey and comb, which Jones said he'll re-use as much as of as he can.

As for the bees, they're getting new home in rural Ohio.

"Right now there is a shortage of bees all over the world, so we're doing everything we can to help them along," Jones said.

Repairs will last through the first part of this week, Jones said.

The cost of removal, about $2,800.

But the Hayes did get something out of the honeycomb mess: a favorite new recipe.

Jones gave the family some honey and Hayes made honey pork chops.

"The kids ate every bite,'' Hayes said. "They said they want it again."

 

The Enquirer/ Ernest Coleman 

Rees Hayes, 7, left holds a honey bee cone that was inside the walls of his family home in Green Township. Behind him they are his father and mother Doug and Susan Hayes, and his three sisters Kyle, 11, Devan, 14 and little sister Lilyanna, 5.

 

The Enquirer / Ernest Coleman 

The exterior of the home had to be removed to extract the beehive.